Overview

Enter the Kobold puzzle

In order to breach the defenses protecting Sor'jek's hidden fortress, Khiin of Argonessen asked you to retrieve Khyber Dragonshard Essence. It's located deep within Mount Reysalon and Khiin created a portal for you to travel there.

Spoiler Warning: Information below this point can be considered spoiler material!

What to Expect

Known Traps

Spikes, falling floor

Tips and Misc

The second to last rest shrine is temporary. It lasts about 3-5 minutes before disappearing. If you are fast you can kill the kobolds up the ramp and around the lever before using it. Also, it is actually a pair of rest shrines, and you can use them both even on Hard or Elite difficulty.

The Puzzle

The kobold gauntlet puzzle is based on a mathematical problem called Knight's Tour (or Warnsdorff's Algorithm). See Wikipedia article if you are interested.

The maps below outline where you will end up when stepping on squares.

The point of this puzzle is to turn all the lights on in the cages. Be careful when you move. You may accidentally turn a light off necessitating you go back. You need to turn ALL the lights on. If you are in a room with an unlit light, jump once to turn it on.

You always land in a room facing West.

For a solution try the following Chain:

genpirlcikqjdmfhomt

The rest of the party can take i k t to move through.

From s take the chain of l j for chest.

Alternate description for puzzle solution: when entering a room, face West and consider the positions of the lights surrounding you as if they were the numbers on a clock. 12, 3, 6 & 9 o'clock will never be options. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 & 11 o'clock may be. To follow the path above, after entering the puzzle through the center light, select 7, 4, 1, 8, 4, 11, 10, 5, 1, 5, 8, 11, 4, 8, 1, 2, 7 then 2 o'clock.

Warning : If all the tiles are already lit when you reach the puzzle room, it has glitched and you will not be able to complete the mandatory objective "Survive the Kobold Gauntlet". You will not be able to finish the quest even after retrieving the dragonshard essence and will need to recall. This was supposed to be fixed in u39 but is still bugged as of u40.

End Fight

The end fight is very challenging. It's recommended that a party will leave one person at the last shrine as an emergency rescuer, to release the party back up from the cave below, or to try to collect stones in case everyone else is dead.

Solo tip: you can park a (gold seal) hireling at the valve to let you back up and prevent a failure in the event of your death.

One of the major challenges of the end fight comes from the Living Spells. If you can't nuke 'em down quickly, use Ooze Puppet to contain their threats.

Recommended tactic is for the melee to head straight for Desaga (the boss kobold), and pin him into the wall to quickly DPS him down, then head for the Efreeti and take him down fast as well. While this is being done, a caster type should get the living spell/mephit agro and either kill or charm them all. Especially important is targeting the living meteor swarm first, as that is by far the most dangerous foe. Done well, both bosses should be dead in under a minute, and all that will be left is the fire elementals, as the living spells will no longer respawn. You can then loot the chests and DDoor out without bothering to kill the fire elementals, as killing them provides no benefit and takes quite a long time.

The living spells stop respawning as soon as Desaga (the red-named kobold) and efreeti are killed. Also note that while Desaga will return with full health if he gets too close to the entrance, this is not the case for the fire elementals. Therefore another tactic is to first have the healer(s) in the entrance tunnel while the melee(s) carefully pull over the elementals and living spells (the boss won't be able to follow), though this tactic will take a long time and probably resources, since the fire elementals have massive amounts of hitpoints and the living spells deal very heavy damage. You'd most likely want to charm the spells if you choose to do it this way.

Bonus XP

Loot

Chests: 5

1 optional for killing the first Frenzied Fire Elemental

1 optional for clearing the kobold nest

1 in the gauntlet puzzle

1 at the end for killing Desaga and Pyripnon (Paragon Kobold and Efreet)

This unlocked end chest contains the Khyber Dragonshard Essence - BtC on Acquire, this is one of the three essences needed to flag for Stealer of Souls - as well a random Eldritch Rune - BtC on Acquire. The Eldritch rune is likely but not guaranteed on casual.

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Bezeek's Skill DCs

Heroic DC table

Skill

Quest Difficulty

Skill Total

Suspected DC range

(Intimidate) Hand over the key right now before I rip every last scale from your body.

Normal

?-42

Hard

?-42

Elite

42:Success

?-42

(Bluff) But your leader sent me here to help guard this... shiny. I need to see him immediately.

Normal

20:Fail

21-?

Hard

Elite

32:Fail

33-?

(Haggle) I have five plat here that will make you give me that key. They are so shiny...